If Abraham Lincoln and his Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, had thought they had cowed Gen. David Hunter by countermanding his order of emancipation in Spring 1862 for the Department of the South, they were sorely mistaken. Even before Hunter tried to free the slaves in his command, on his own initiative he took the unprecedented step of recruiting black men into the Union Army. In early May 1862 he began raising a regiment of contraband slaves. On May 8, 1862 (the day before he issued his emancipation order for the Department of the South), wrote his subordinate, Brig. Gen. Issac I. Stevens:

Hunter’s actions were consistent with his abolitionist tendencies and his belief that since his superiors in Washington, D.C., neglected the Department of the South he was justified taking extraordinary steps to bolster the strength of his isolated command. Hunter had asked the War Department in late April 1862 for authority to recruit African Americans as soldiers, but when he received no answer, he went ahead with the idea on his own authority. As with his emancipation order, however, David Hunter overreached. Just as Stanton and Lincoln were not ready for immediate emancipation in late Spring 1862 they were not ready to recruit blacks as Union soldiers.

But it took longer in the case of Hunter’s black soldiers for the Lincoln administration to respond. Lincoln and his cabinet was busy enough in Spring 1862 with McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign to capture Richmond, and what little attention could be spared the Department of the South went to countermanding Hunter’s emancipation order and responding to the public furor over it in the North and especially in the loyal slave states. While David Hunter did not try to keep his recruitment activities of African Americans a secret, he also did not go out of his way to let his superiors in Washington know what he was doing. Soon enough though word of Hunter’s new initiative spread, especially because of his recruiting methods. Instead of simply seeking volunteers among the male African-American population in Union-controlled areas of the Department of South, the general gave orders that all black men of military age, who appeared capable of service, be impressed by Union recruiters. In other words, he instituted an informal draft. This brought Hunter into conflict with Treasury agents caring for plantations abandoned by their owners, who needed black laborers to keep them functioning. These men complained to their immediate superior, Edward L. Pierce, overseeing Treasury Department interests in Hunter’s command, who then proceeded to complain to the general. On May 11, 1862, Pierce wrote Hunter, informing him that the Treasury Department had expended large sums of money to keep in production the plantations under his care and that money would be wasted if he lost his most productive workers. Not only that, but Pierce also feared that the fragile alliance of federal authorities with the African Americans in the Sea Islands would be undone if they were impressed for military service. He wrote to the general:

The day following his letter to Hunter, Pierce wrote his boss in Washington, D.C., Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase, alerting him to the general’s action and the problems they were causing. Nonetheless, Lincoln administration did not act until Hunter’s recruitment of African Americans came to the attention of Congress. On June 9, 1862, the House of Representative passed a resolution, written by Kentucky Congressman Charles A. Wyckliffe, demanding information from War Department on Hunter’s activities, especially:

To this inquiry, Edwin M. Stanton feigned ignorance that David Hunter was recruiting African Americans into the Union Army (Chase had advised him of it on May 27), and disavowed that the general had received any authority from the Lincoln administration to do so. Not surprisingly, the Secretary of War then hastened to write Hunter for clarification. David Hunter’s reply, dated June 23, 1862, was a model of proud defiance in defending his actions. He wrote Stanton:

Interestingly, unlike the case of his emancipation order, Lincoln and Stanton did not seek to reverse David Hunter’s initiative to recruit black men as soldiers. But neither did they retroactively sanction it and refused to feed, cloth, or pay Hunter’s black regiment. Despite legislation from Congress in Summer 1862 authorizing the recruitment of African Americans as soldiers, the Lincoln administration still declined to recognize the regiment, and the general was forced to disband it except for one company under Captain Charles Towbridge, which he managed to keep in service. This company would later, after Hunter left, form the nucleus of the 1st South Carolina Infantry, later redesignated the 33rd U.S. Colored Infantry. So while David Hunter was unsuccessful in getting his black regiment accepted into federal service, his efforts were not wasted, as they pressed the issue of recruiting African Americans into the Union Army and eased the path for other black units that would soon follow.

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About Donald R. Shaffer

Donald R. Shaffer is the author of _After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans_ (Kansas, 2004), which won the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship in 2005. More recently he published (with Elizabeth Regosin), _Voices of Emancipation: Understanding Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction through the U.S. Pension Bureau Files_ (2008). Dr. Shaffer teaches online exclusively (i.e., a virtual professor). He lives in Arizona and can be contacted at donald_shaffer@yahoo.com